HP Split X2 review

BATTERY AND SPECS

We were impressed with its battery life, too. In tablet mode, it lasted 7 hours and 9 minutes in our light use test with the screen set to half brightness, but when we combined it with the battery in the keyboard dock, we managed a huge 10 hours and 47 minutes under the same conditions. This makes it perfect for long journeys, and while it doesn’t match the Envy X2’s near 13-hour battery life, we’d happily take the extra processing power over another two hours of portability.

The Split X2’s Intel HD Graphics 4200 can just about handle 3D games as well, although you’ll have to lower the settings quite considerably to play them at a comfortable speed. We barely scraped 16fps in our Dirt Showdown test on High quality settings at a 1,280×720 resolution, but we managed to increase this to 29fps on Low quality at the same resolution when we disabled the anti-aliasing. This is one of the best scores we’ve seen for a Windows 8 tablet, but it’s still arguably more suited to simple touch-based games from the Windows 8 Store rather than the latest 3D titles.

CONCLUSION

The HP Split X2 is a great improvement on the detachable Windows 8 hybrid formula, and it’s a good choice if you want a tablet that you can use as a laptop. If you’d rather have a laptop you can carry around, you can save a lot of money by buying the Asus VivoBook X200CA or get better battery life and performance with the slim Apple 13-inch MacBook Air.